Hey d00d!!

We lerns gud in Murica!!! And we gots the self-steem awards to prove it!!

(Note: and this is why we homeschooled our children. THEY can read and write, do math, and know actual history. The oldest is the de-facto helpdesk at work: Helldesk comes to HER when they're stumped. Both also code far better than I do. . .)

Re: Except, of course. . .

. . .some of us already have one. You still wait months for it to "cross over". And if you're particularly lucky. . . .then you get scheduled for a session on The Box.

Which is an order of magnitude MORE joy, because apparently older folks, IT folks, and people with medical issues are nearly impossible to get a solid read on. . . so you get re-scheduled to take it again, a month or three later. . . and it's back to the off-site meeting room in the meantime . . .

. . .or not rapidly.

Way back when, I flew jets for the USAF. The FIRST portion of Pilot or Navigator school is Aerospace Physiology. All the lovely things that happen to the human body at altitude. Farting is just the start. And the 8,000 foot cabin altitude of civilian jetliners is easy: military cabins are typically at 10K feet pressure altitude.

We learned, early on, which foods produce the most gas, and more importantly, which ones make you sleepy. And, as part of the training, we did altitude chamber "rides". Trust me, when you re-pressurised to 8-10K after everyone being on oxygen and cabin altitude at 38K, it was enough to gag a maggot. . .

Re: Find something wrong? Equifax has a product for that

Not really. I got zapped by the US Gov OMB hack. . . their monitoring and "repair" service is absolutely worthless. But it gives me near-weekly updates on any registered sex offenders within ~20 miles. A feature I neither wanted or needed.

When someone tried to open an account in my name, I got a warning from the BANK, who thought it dodgy. It took a MONTH for the OMB "MyIDCare" to even show the queries.

Re: Sure there are potential exploits against paper

I disagree. An election attack can be made via critical nodes. When elections are run at the county level, you need but to merely control the count in critical counties, and delay final results until all non-crtitical results are in. The Commonwealth of Virginia is the exemplar here, in each of the major statewide elections for over 10 years, the voting districts inside the Beltway and in the Tidewater area, all heavily urbanized and the first areas one would expect to report. . . .never do.

The Opposition candidate is always 1-2 points ahead. . . . .and then an hour with no changes, and suddenly Arlington and Hampton Roads report, and BOOM! their candidate pulls ahead by about 5% over the greatest possible margin of error. . . .

It's cynical. but your vote does not count so much as who ***counts*** the votes. . .

"Rational Gun Control"

. . . are you planning on banning small home shops ? 3-D Printers ? Or Home CNC machines ? You can make a firearm with any of them.

Heck, you can skip down to your local Home Improvement store and get everything you need to make a plethora of weapons, in the plumbing section alone.

Hint: guns are not dangerous: PEOPLE are. Like people on psych meds, and ESPECIALLY people coming off them. SSRI inhibitors are involved on most of the "mass shootings" (i.e. the ones that get air time, and not just J. Random Gangbanger spraying bullets in Da Hood. . . .) in the past few decades.

There are other common factors as well, the most politically incorrect of them being that of the last 23 "mass shooters" in .US (prior to this weekend), 22 grew up in single-parent households. . . .

I'll also note both the rise of "garage guns" in Australia, and the rise of arson as a means of settling scores Down Under. . .

What was that ripping sound ??

"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."

Re: "US train makers have a long experience in such kind of transport"

Question is, is a new model of train required ? If you've optimized a basic model, most upgrades (like electronics) are bolt-on additions, and can be upgraded as required.

Last numbers I've seen have North American freight traffic a~9 times the tonnage of EU traffic, over a significantly larger footprint. And yet we have a system that works well enough that freight train accidents are memorable events.

Years ago. . .

. . . a friend was holding a house-warming party, the week before Christmas. Her DSL hadn't been connected yet, **AND** this was an audience of geeks. So, out of 10 singles and couples, we had 7 laptops.

We went searching for open access points. . . .and found 20+. Every single one either admin/admin or admin/password. And most had Win9x or XP PCs behind them, also wide open.

So we locked down all the networks, and left a note on the desktop of all the PCs, from "Santa's Elves", with the new username and password for the wireless routers.

Ah, memories. . .

I was teaching a course to develop the first set of Windows Admins/Engineers for a large, unspecified Federal Agency in the Fort Meade, Maryland, vicinity.

Part of this was A+, part was Windows NT4 MCSE, and part was Linux and Cisco.

I jokingly referred to "magic smoke" being the key to computing. One of the students demanded I show them some "magic smoke".

Luckily, we were in the lab, I had a whole stack of discarded AMD K2 motherboards, and a number of variable power supplies.

Wired it up. set the 5 volt feed to 30 volts, and the 12 volt feed to 75 volts. Inside of 5 seconds, hilarity ensued. Capacitors were popping with little bursts of flame and large bursts of. . . "magic smoke".

But as I was pointing out the "magic smoke" to the class, I had neglected to power down the supplies.

And someone asks, "Is the CPU supposed to do that ?".

I take a look back at the mobo, and the CPU has deformed about half an inch. . . and suddenly BANG, burst of flame. . . and no CPU. Well, at least on the mobo: it had embedded its' remains in the ceiling, 10 feet above.

This happened to me, sort of, late 1990s . .

. . . . .but the blame is purely on the manufacturer. They shall remain nameless, but it was a top-of-the-line LaserJet 5. We checked that it could handle 220, spec said it was 110/220.

What PrintZilla ***didn't*** say was, the 110V was one stock number, and the 220V was a separate stock number. And you couldn't buy the 220 version in North America, where we sourced everything else (all of which was dead easy to change over, flip the switch on the back of the Power Supply, and locally source the power cords to match local outlet configuration. . .)

We had to re-pack and ship the 110 version back to the States.

But the story does not end there. We were doing the install at HQ NATO. So, we called *(redacted)* Belgium, asked who their local resellers were. They named a company whose nearest office was in Antwerp, and another whose office was, conveniently, right next store to the US Support Activity. And we even had an account with them.

Or so we thought. I make a call, half in English and the rest in French, for an appointment the next morning. I get there. . . and they hand me an application form to become a customer. I was told to fill it out, and they'd get back to us in 4-6 weeks. I told them, that I needed to buy a printer now, and pulled out a wad of cash, ~180,000 Belgian Francs. Got told they didn't accept cash payments. Pointed out we already had an account in .us. Was informed that the .us was a different organization, and we needed to be an approved customer of **theirs**. I walked out.

Grabbed the Pages Jeune, and started calling companies that had HP logos in their ads. About a third, 10 or so, had the printer we wanted in stock. I got a name, a voice number, and a fax number.

Got a list of vendors, made a standard bid request. Model XYZ printer, with accessories A and B, for cash, delivered to HQ NATO C/o my employer's Company and the US Mission. Best price, taxes and delivery included, reply by fax with bid NLT 1400, Friday (this was a Tuesday afternoon).

Got one bid on Wednesday, after lunch. And then nothing. Called the outfit that bid on Friday at 1410, and we arranged delivery and payment for Monday morning. Easy peasy, installed as per the book, no circuits popping. Up and running by COB.

Rest of the network install continued over the next two weeks. But two weeks after we sent out the bid, a second company responded, with a much higher price, and delivery in 20-30 days. Ignored it. Next morning, the guy called, and asked when we could work payment for his bid.

I pointed out that bidding had closed ~10 days prior, someone had been selected, the printer paid for AND INSTALLED for a week-plus.

Guy flips out, did we not know who he was, he would complain to NATO, I pointed out that NATO wasn't buying it, a private US company was, supporting an activity based in the Pentagon. He said he would complain to the Ambassador. I gave him the Embassy switchboard number and wished him luck. . (turns out he had done this before, the Embassy had him on their "cranks" list. . .). The next day, the team flew back to .us.

2-3 weeks after this, we get a call from the US Mission. Seems that the original reseller had approved us to be a customer, and they wanted to discuss when we could take delivery of the printer. . . .Apparently, they weren't amused when I emailed them, and told them that it was overcome by events. And in any case, their proffered price was about 10% higher than what we paid. . . .

Ever TRY to work for Uncle Sam ??

. . . .the process is lengthy and byzantine. No, you can't use your regular resume or CV. Instead, you have to write a custom document addressing required "KSAs" (Knowledge, Skills, Abilities) for each and every point of the job description. And then wait. In one case, I waited 14 months for a response, got a phone interview, and 6 months after THAT, got an email telling me I was not selected.

All for lousy pay (compared to the private sector), but excellent benefits. Including being effectively layoff-proof. . . .

Oh, and a list of certifications ? Department of Defense has had that for 11 years: why not use theirs ??

All in all, the pain and hassle of putting in for a Federal Job in us.gov is pretty much not worth the payoff. . .

Congratulations! (was : Re: I disagree...)

You just repeated the argument against colonizing the New World. Half the point of new worlds, be they continental or planetary, or asteroidal, or, hopefully some day, in another solar system. . . . is a fresh start.

FDISK /MBR and install the OS of your life from scratch, as it were. . .